We were in Aalst (between Brussels and Ghent in Belgium) today.
The b-Post building showed some interesting reflections.

I shot a number of subsequent pictures there, and thought it would be a good subject to try out a few Art Filters.

I do not like all of them, but some can create an interesting effect for certain subjects that I found is even hard to replicate with my own meagre PP efforts. Not something for serious work, probably, but fun to play around with just for kicks.

The following five images are
100% straight-out-of-camera images
, taken in the span of one or two minutes, with several Art Filters (the ones I think are most interesting for this kind of thing).

Absolutely no PP afterwards and not even cropping : all I did at home, was resize the JPGs to web-size
(reducing the files from around 3,5Mb to 600-800Kb)
and add my signature and frame.

No other intention than to show the Art Filters effects on a suitable subject.

I did this before with the E-5 but in that case I applied the filters one after the other to one single RAW. Now they are subsequent exposures, as you can tell from the slight perspective variations and the drifting clouds.

Here they come, for what they are worth.

Pop Art (first version):

(too saturated for my taste, but the subject can stand such heavy-handed approach)

Pale & Light Colour:

(this one comes closest to the standard conversion from RAW, although that standard conversion has more saturation and "pop", and I would normally add even more clarity, blacks etc)

Pinhole:

(apart from the more heavy vignetting, this is probably closest to what I myself would process from RAW, with heavy contrasts and blacks)

Cross Process (purplish version - I think that is "II"):

(not something I thought would work, but hey well... why not go totally overboard once in a while?)

Dramatic Tone (B&W version):

(I am starting to feel this Filter is actually useful on certain occasions, mainly for buildings and landscapes : it works a certain miracle magic with the dynamic range, lifting shadows and reigning in highlights very effectively, while curbing noise and still keeping a very high contrast - I've already found it is not quite easy to recreate the same effect from a RAW without the olympus jpg engine)

Now tell me, what do you think?

I have personally always been extremely sceptical about the Art Filters, thinking mainly that I did not need them (I still don't) but also that the results looked either bad, or could be replicated easily with basic PP. But I must admit that I really feel Olympus are ironing out the wrinkles from the previous iterations quite effectively, and have provided us with a neat little gimmick.
Those who are not in favour can just ignore the feature.

And even more importantly: if you have done
similar experiments
with several Art Filters on a single subject,
please share your results
.
--
Roel Hendrickx